Invited Speakers

Dr. Barranco received his BA in Physical Chemistry from the University of Granada (1995) and his PhD from the University of Sevilla in 2002. After three postdoctoral periods in the CNRS (Poitiers, France, 2002), EMPA-ETH (Switzerland 2003-2004), and the University of Seville (Ramon y Cajal fellow (2005-2006) he got a tenured position in the National Research Council of Spain (CSIC) in 2007. Since 2016, he is a Senior Scientist at the Materials Science Institute of Seville (ICMS-CSIC-US). His scientific career is focused on developing multifunctional materials in the form of thin films, multilayered supported nanostructures, and functional surfaces by plasma and vacuum techniques, including the development of devices (photonic sensors, solar cells, optical devices). He is the Group Leader of the Nanotechnology and Plasma Group in the ICMS. He has co-authored 150 research articles and 13 patents and supervised 9 doctoral theses.

Prof. Juan F. Sánchez-Royo is integrated in the unit of research of Optoelectronic Materials and Devices (UMDO) and is responsible for the Lowdim research line (www.uv.es/lowdim) at the Materials Science Institute (ICMUV) of the University of Valencia, Spain. He received the B.S., and Ph.D. degrees in physics from the University of Valencia in 1992 and 1998, respectively. During his PhD, he performed two research stays at the Hahn-Meitner Institute of Berlin (Germany). After a postdoctoral stay (1999-2001) at the French-Spanish beamline at the LURE Synchrotron (France), he set up a research line devoted to the electronic characterization of materials by photoemission (UPS and XPS) at the University of Valencia. Since 2002 he occupies a permanent position at the University of Valencia and became Full Professor in October 2019. During this last period, he has also performed several research stays at SOLEIL Synchrotron (France), at University of California Berkeley (USA), and at Heriot-Watt University (UK). His current research interests include two-dimensional materials (layered semiconductors, topological insulators, and graphene), electronic and optoelectronic characterization of low-dimensional materials and related devices.

Dr. Nicoleta Nicoara is a staff researcher at the International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory (INL) in Braga, Portugal. Her research focuses on the development and application of advanced scanning probe microscopy (SPM) techniques to study the nanoscale surface and interface properties of energy-related materials, with particular emphasis on semiconductors used in high-efficiency solar cells. She specializes in nanoscale optoelectronic and electronic property mapping, including structure-property correlations, and her work has applications in thin films, functional surfaces, and energy conversion materials. Dr. Nicoara earned her Ph.D. in Condensed Matter Physics from Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Spain) in 2007, where she investigated organic/inorganic interfaces for optoelectronic devices. As a postdoctoral researcher (2007–2011) at UAM, she developed a low-temperature scanning probe microscope for atomic-scale characterization of low-dimensional systems.

Sascha Sadewasser is the Principal Investigator at the International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory (INL) since 2011. He holds a Diploma (1995) in Physics from the RWTH Aachen, Germany and a PhD (1999) from the Washington University St. Louis, MO, USA. After post-docs in Berlin (Hahn-Institute) and Barcelona (Centro Nacional de Microelectrónica), he became group leader and later deputy department head at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin, Germany. After obtained his Habilitation in Experimental Physics from the Free University of Berlin, Germany (2011). Sascha has published 140+ peer-reviewed papers, with 4000+ citations. He has published 5 book chapters and has been granted 3 patents.